Inside the Court of Henry VIII

This is the story of a royal court that changed the world.

Above it all, Henry VIII, the Tyrant King.

HUTCHINSON: He was brutal.

He was ruthless.

He was probably the most selfish king we've ever had.

A paranoid despot obsessed with treason.

BORMAN: This was a reign of terror.

He made people very aware of every execution.

A religious fanatic who rebels against his church.

He believed that what he wanted was what God wanted.

To prosper in his shadow takes guile and audacity, but no one is ever safe.

You never knew, from one day to the next, whether you'd see the next dawn.

[ Bell tolls ] They say the smell was the first thing that hit you.

The stench from his putrefying sores.

[ Gasping ] This is Henry VIII, king of England, on his deathbed.

His body is rotting.

His nation, bankrupt.

His court is ripped apart by factions.

His people are living in fear.

Thousands have lost their heads to his rage and ambition -- commoners, courtiers, and queens.

[ Labored breathing ] This is the sorry end of the most tumultuous, tyrannous reign in English history, a reign that had looked so promising.

[ Fanfare plays ] In 1509, Henry VIII came to the throne.

[ Crowd cheers ] A vigorous young man with new ideas.

[ Cheering intensifies ] HUTCHINSON: Here, we have a young prince, learned, clever, interested in music, in the sciences, but also a sportsman who loved spectacle.

He loved magnificence.

He created this renaissance court.

There was pageantry.

There was spectacle.

Henry was really the new hope -- similar, in a way, to when Kennedy became president of the United States.

There was hope.

There were dreams again for the future.

Anything that Henry did was golden.

Henry's royal court is the center of power and patronage in England.

BORMAN: The prizes to be gained from success at Henry's court were dazzling.

You could get titles and estates and money and, above all else, you could get power.

In this feudal age, society is rigidly structured.

Class was everything at the court of Henry VIII.

You were born to greatness.

You did not work your way up.

The court is dominated by the noble, landowning aristocracy.

As men of blue blood, they had the ability to be able to advise the king on areas of policy, and it was seen as their right.

He may be the monarch, but, equally, they have a right to advise him and to be his close confidants and advisors.

They see Henry as one of their own -- effectively, a first among equals.

But Henry VIII has different ideas.

In his mind, he has no equals.

HUTCHINSON: He had an ego the size of a truck.

For the first time in English history, here is a monarch who insists on them addressing him as no longer "Sire" -- it's "Your Majesty".

That's symptomatic of the way his mind worked.

He was more magnificent than anybody else around him.

Alongside the ego lurks an aggressive insecurity.

Henry is dangerous to know.

Henry had a natural paranoia.

I think it stemmed from that natural insecurity that all of the Tudors had, about their rather shaky right to the throne of England.

A generation earlier, the aristocracy had been at each other's throats, in a civil war where kings, dukes, lords, and earls tore each other to shreds.

Henry's father, minor noble Henry Tudor, had triumphed.

In victory, he had put the Tudors on the throne.

But the rival noble families still populated the royal court.

HUTCHINSON: These members of the aristocracy helped Henry, but they also were a threat to Henry.

Many of them had very viable claims to the throne.

BORMAN: He was very aware that, in fact, their claim to the throne was at least as strong as his own, if not stronger.

Henry's paranoia led him to act very swiftly and decisively and brutally against any would-be plotters.

If there was a rumor of a conspiracy, he would not wait for the evidence.

In 1521, his paranoia breaks into the open.

A high-ranking noble in Henry's inner circle, the Duke of Buckingham, is executed for treason.

The Duke of Buckingham was executed on very flimsy charges.

His real crime was that he had royal blood.

HUTCHINSON: His destruction was a very clear signal sent by Henry that "This is what happens if you nurture ambitions to take the throne of England from the Tudors."

With a paranoid, insecure king on the throne, the aristocracy remain under suspicion.

The door is open for men of low birth to make their mark.

When first built in 1515, Hampton Court Palace was the most imposing stately home in the entire country.

It surpassed even the mansions of the wealthiest nobility.

But its owner was a mere commoner -- Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the man who ran England.

Nobles dominate Henry's court, but not Henry's government.

The king has put a lowborn man in charge, a man who was once his personal priest.

Thomas Wolsey, the son of a butcher, was an almoner in 1509.

This is the guy who gives out all the alms to the poor outside the palace gates.

Within 6 years, he's Lord Chancellor.

How did he do it?

Young Henry hated governing.

He's there to go hunting, to joust.

He's never had and never did have an interest in paperwork.

The young Henry had no interest in the business of government whatsoever.

He found writing tedious and painful.

He delegated everything away.

The churchman was a beneficiary of tasks thrown his way by the king.

Wolsey proved a genius at finance and administration, so the king entrusted him with ever-greater authority.

Crucially, he succeeds in putting the spendthrift king back in the black.

If Wolsey can make the king rich, Henry doesn't care where he comes from.

And Henry's distrust of his fellow nobles makes Wolsey's humble background an advantage.

Henry himself quite liked the fact that he could turn round to someone and say "I made you.

It is through me that you hold your power."

He couldn't do that with the old nobility.

They had their positions and power by right of birth.

Grateful Henry showers Wolsey with titles and great wealth, and Wolsey builds Hampton Court to show off his riches.

BORMAN: He loved the trappings of wealth and power, so he was determined to build the finest palace that the world had ever seen, here at Hampton Court.

And he wanted to bring in ideas from across the continent.

Here, behind me, you can see these roundels with the busts of Roman emperors.

They were made by the finest Italian craftsmen.

Wolsey also seeks out the best administrators.

A favorite is fellow commoner Thomas Cromwell.

He was the son of a blacksmith, Wolsey's the son of a butcher, so that gave them something very important in common, but there was more than that.

Wolsey spotted Cromwell's potential.

He was very, very skilled in politics, in law, so Wolsey rapidly appointed him to a very prestigious part in his own council.

Cromwell will prove a loyal supporter of Wolsey, in a court where Wolsey is widely loathed.

Chief among Wolsey's enemies is the Duke of Norfolk.

Norfolk was from one of the oldest and most distinguished noble families in England.

He took no prisoners, and he particularly was obsessed with status.

HUTCHINSON: Since time immemorial, the aristocracy of England ran the country.

They had all the important jobs.

Suddenly, here is the son of an Ipswich butcher, having constant access to the king.

Who is this upstart, this new man who has come in, based on his ability to shuffle papers around, who's doing them out of their traditional role in England?

What's more, he's arrogant.

BORMAN: Wolsey wasn't at all intimidated by his noble contemporaries.

He had quite an irreverent streak to his character, and he would often humiliate them in council meetings.

He was obviously much cleverer than most of them and didn't flinch from putting them down, proving them wrong.

They hated him for that.

Norfolk wants to destroy the arrogant priest, but Wolsey always outwits him.

He understands Henry, better than anyone and knows he will survive, if he stays close to his monarch.

Even though Henry was quite singleminded, he was also susceptible to gossip and to rumor.

He would listen to the unfavorable reports of other courtiers.

He could be turned against people in that way.

For Wolsey's position, it was vital that he had the king's ear.

If you were accused of treason, if you could plead for yourself in person, you'd be far more likely to survive.

For more than a decade, Wolsey's skills ensured he would lord it over the nobles.

But he will be no match for the power of one woman.

This is Hever Castle.

In this magnificent manor house was born a woman for whom Henry would cause chaos in his court and outrage throughout the Christian world.

Here she is -- Anne Boleyn.

Anne Boleyn is the daughter of one of Henry's ambassadors.

She has spent her formative years in France.

Now it is time for her to find a match at the English court.

She was so different from the parochial Englishwoman and ladies-in-waiting.

What she had was the "it" factor.

She immediately stood out as this gracious personality who effectively set the court on fire, and that's why Henry immediately picked up on her.

The king's attentions are not initially honorable.

Women at the court were generally viewed as either potential wives, wives, or whores.

I don't believe that Henry was intent on making Anne his wife from the first moment he saw her.

What he wanted to do was to bed her.

But Anne has other plans.

BORMAN: She refused to become the king's mistress.

She'd seen what could happen -- her own sister Mary had been Henry's mistress for a time.

That wasn't good enough for Anne.

She knew what she wanted from a very early stage.

She wanted to be queen.

Anne's bold proposal is well-timed.

For nearly 20 years, Henry has been married to Spanish Princess Catherine of Aragon.

But Catherine has failed to conceive a son and is now beyond childbearing age.

He needed lusty male heirs to stave off many people who had a much more viable claim to the English throne than the Tudors did.

All good kings had sons to take their place when they died, and Henry didn't have a son.

And this became more and more of an issue with him.

In Anne, the 35-year-old Henry now sees the perfect solution.

He will divorce Catherine and make Anne his younger, more fertile queen.

Only the Pope in Rome can grant a divorce.

Wolsey is given the task of securing it.

This is a challenge for even the master fixer, and he has little respect for the king's impudent mistress.

But Wolsey is slow to recognize the danger this love affair poses for his relationship with the king.

I'm holding Anne Boleyn's prayer book.

In the book, she's written a note to Henry, a love letter, basically, a love note.

Henry and Anne constantly wrote love notes to one another during their courtship, and this one says, "Remember me when you do pray that hope doth lead from day to day".

She's written this on a page opposite Baby Jesus.

What Anne is saying to Henry is, "I will deliver you of a male heir," which is something that Cardinal Wolsey could never deliver.

By 1529, after two years of negotiation, it is clear the Pope will not allow the divorce.

A resentful Anne blames Wolsey.

In private, she is heard attempting to turn th e king against his counselor.

Henry, although he was disappointed by Wolsey's failure to get him the divorce, forgave him.

He still liked Wolsey, and he trusted his advice.

Anne, on the other hand, was the one who was whispering against Wolsey.

She was telling Henry that his chief minister had turned traitor.

Because of Henry's paranoia, when he heard the worst about someone, he was more liable to believe it.

He was very, very capable of changing his mind, in a matter of moments, about someone who had been high in favor.

I think Anne was almost entirely responsible for the fall of Wolsey.

Suddenly, Wolsey has lost control.

Now Anne has the king's ear.

The cardinal is helpless.

HUTCHINSON: By having Henrys favor, you have wealth and status, which you can accrue astonishingly fast, but if you lose it, you have oblivion.

The other nobles, who hate Wolsey, sense that the kill is about to happen.

Without access to the king, Wolsey is in jeopardy.

Whisperings of treason now go unchecked.

Desperate to regain favor, he gifts his magnificent palace to his king.

BORMAN: This coat of arms is proof that Hampton Court was now Henry's, not Wolsey's.

It was originally made for Wolsey -- you can see an angel there, on the right, symbolizing the fact he was a cardinal -- but then Henry had all of that paint scraped off.

It was repainted with the royal coat of arms.

But all is in vain.

Within weeks, a sickened Wolsey is summoned to trial -- a trial that will never happen.

On his way to court, disgraced, alone, and impoverished, he dies.

The fact that Wolsey had served him faithfully for all these years, that Henry actually liked Wolsey on a personal level, they counted for nothing.

Power now rests with the king's vengeful mistress and in her quest to become queen, nothing will be sacred.

[ Singing in Latin ] In the time of Henry VIII, religious belief was everything.

MacCULLOCH: Medieval people were much more used to death all around them than we are.

Their lives were shorter.

Their lives were full of pain, and the church gave them a sense that there was a better world beyond, in which the pains of this world would go, if they were in heaven, and would be infinitely worse, if they were in hell.

The church was the only institution around which would get you to heaven.

Across Christian Europe, kings bowed to the spiritual authority of the Pope, and the monastic orders of the Catholic Church were central to society.

This is the priory church of St. Bartholomew.

It's right in the middle of central London and it's just a fragment of the beautiful medieval church which existed once.

The community of monks here served the poor, they educated children, they looked after the sick.

In other words, a church like this would be the center of the community.

But by the start of the 16th century, the Catholic Church was widely corrupt.

Popes led debauched lives, and if you were rich, salvation could be bought.

By the 1520s, worshippers are rebelling.

The Protestant Reformation, as it would be called, is sweeping across Europe, the reformers demanding an end to the Pope's control.

In England, Henry remains steadfastly loyal.

He took his religion seriously.

Henry thought he had a special relationship with God, a unique relationship with God, you might say.

He believed that the Tudor dynasty were only on the throne because of God's favor, and so Henry, all through his life, wanted to please God.

For years, this meant brutally cracking down on the religious reformers.

But when Henry fell for Anne, he brought more than a woman into his heart.

He brought Protestant rebellion.

When heretical books are discovered in her chambers, Henry realizes Anne is no loyal Catholic.

ROYAL: Anne learnt about the new religion when she was at court in France and was a firm believer in the new, evangelical way of teaching religion.

Audaciously, Anne seizes the moment.

She reveals that reformist ideas hold the solution to the Pope's block on their marriage.

MacCULLOCH: The king loved her, and so he listened when she said things about religion which, otherwise, he might have despised or said was heretical.

It's incredibly explosive that Anne is an evangelical.

She is effectively educating the king in the new religion, and that is a crucial point.

The heresy that catches Henry's imagination is that the Pope, the man blocking his marriage, is the enemy of God.

In Henry's mind, this makes perfect sense.

HUTCHINSON: He believed that God shared his plans and desires for his monarchy, for his dynasty, and for his country.

MacCULLOCH: He believed that what he wanted was what God wanted and so, if there is something which Henry wanted, like getting rid of one wife and replacing her, it was God's will that that should happen.

The evangelicals also make clear where spiritual leadership must lie, in the absence of a Pope.

The Pope is the enemy of the Church and, therefore, the protector of the Church should be someone else, and that person could only be the king.

To Henry, his mission is now clear.

He will supplant the Pope in England, ensuring his own succession by taking over the Church and granting his own divorce.

But even Henry realizes that taking on the Catholic Church directly risks civil war.

SKIDMORE: I think, if Henry had decided to go down the route of proclamation, issuing this edict that, suddenly, he was going to break from Rome, I think all hell would've been let loose.

I think that the population at large, still predominantly Catholic, would not have countenanced the fact that a king could take these decisions without any recourse to the people.

The man he chooses to resolve his dilemma is Wolsey's old sidekick, Thomas Cromwell.

I don't think we can underestimate how extraordinary it was that Cromwell managed to not only survive Wolsey's fall, but thrive in the aftermath, and he did that, I think, because he appealed to Henry VIII.

Henry missed Wolsey, and here was another lowborn advisor to take his place.

Like Anne, Cromwell is sympathetic to the religious reformers.

He has no qualms about breaking with Rome and is keen to forge new opportunities for common men like himself.

Cromwell's probably the best example, in history of a self-made man.

He came from nowhere.

He was merely the son of a blacksmith, and yet, he had the vision to succeed.

To help the king, Cromwell hatches a plan that only a commoner would suggest -- he will harness people power, putting England on the path to democracy.

I'm here in the Houses of Parliament in London, in Westminster Hall, which is the oldest surviving part of the building, dating back from the 11th century, and it was here that the Tudor parliaments would've met, oh, 500, 600 years ago.

The purpose of the medieval parliament, quite simply, was to agree to taxation, to allow the king to raise money from his subjects.

But, under the guidance of Thomas Cromwell, Parliament became a radically different place, a place where, effectively, modern democracy was born and laws began to matter.

Cromwell realizes he can manipulate this tax-raising institution to authorize enormous social change.

England would break from the Catholic Church, but it would not be Henry's personal decision.

It would be the will of the nation.

I'm standing here in what was the original Parliament chamber, where Thomas Cromwell would've presided over a rowdy group of MPs packed into this quite small room.

Cromwell saw that the king's authority could be far greater if he could ensure that he had common consent, parliamentary consent, to pass legislation.

Cromwell disguises the revolutionary nature of the new Act of Supremacy.

With legal cunning, he cites dubious ancient documents to support the claim that an English king has always had authority over the Church.

MacCULLOCH: What was clever about what Thomas Cromwell did was to say that nothing had really changed.

The king had always been supreme head of the church.

It's just that he'd forgotten about it.

Cromwell's deception succeeds.

Parliament passes the bill.

Henry now controls the English Church, by the consent of the English people.

SKIDMORE: Cromwell's decision to use Parliament meant that Parliament suddenly became far more important than it had ever had done before -- that, suddenly, people saw the principle that representatives of the common man, of the nation at large, should have a greater stake in making decisions on behalf of their country.

This political principle is of no interest to Henry.

Just as he cares not for the finer points of Protestantism.

All he cares is that he now he has the power to grant his own divorce and marry Anne Boleyn.

Henry didn't go into the Reformation intending to give up the Catholic religion whatsoever.

He did it because he wanted something, and he wanted a divorce, he wanted a male heir, and he wanted that supremacy that Cromwell would offer him.

For many Englishmen, following their king in a break from Rome is harder to accept.

BORMAN: This was an age of religious fervor.

People devoutly believed in their faith, so to potentially give up your chance of the afterlife, in order to swear allegiance to your king, would've presented just a terrible conundrum.

For Henry, there can be no conundrum.

You are either with him or against him.

The king now makes it treason to question either his supremacy over the Church or the legitimacy of his new marriage.

The punishment is death.

BORMAN: Henry's new treason law was reflected in the very architecture of his new Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace.

Up in the eaves, you see these little figures dotted all over the ceiling.

They're called eavesdroppers because they were literally in the eaves of the roof.

They were there for a very specific purpose -- Henry wanted the courtiers down below to know that everything they said was overheard.

All those who resist are ruthlessly executed.

Bishops, courtiers, friends -- it makes no difference.

The paranoid king takes no prisoners.

I think it very soon became apparent that this was a reign of terror.

He made people very aware of every execution, so he created this atmosphere of fear and of paranoia amongst his subjects.

Resistant churchmen could expect the worst punishments.

MacCULLOCH: The buildings behind me were once one of the greatest monasteries of Tudor London, the Charterhouse.

Now, the monks of the Charterhouse mostly refused to accept this royal supremacy of Henry VIII, and Henry was ruthless with them.

He hanged, drew, and quartered some of them, and he left some of them to starve to death in prison.

It didn't matter they were holy men.

He wanted to punish them.

Henry would take no resistance at all to what he was doing.

As far as he was concerned, anyone who was an enemy of his reforms was an enemy of God.

The break from Rome has more material consequences.

Monasteries occupy 1/6 of the land in England.

Now, Henry is their new landlord.

Cromwell sees an opportunity for furthering reform and pleasing his master -- by breaking them up and selling them off.

The dissolution of the monasteries was Cromwell's brainchild.

He was genuinely pious.

He was concerned about all the rumors of corruption that were said to be rife in the monasteries across the country.

HUTCHINSON: There was a need for some reform, but, almost certainly, hard cash is the driver here.

Henry was in a need for money, and here was the opportunity for the greatest single piece of privatization in the history of governance, ready and ripe for plucking.

One by one, the monasteries are closed, looted, and their grounds auctioned off.

Henry grows immensely rich.

But Cromwell and his fellow common men also benefit.

SKIDMORE: Henry made a killing out of selling lands, not to the nobility, but to the merchants, new-made men, traditionally, men who would have no access to buy land.

Now they did, and they bought land in spades.

They bought huge estates and ensured that they, themselves, became a new middle class for England.

Ancient monasteries lie in ruins and self-made common men are gaining land and influence.

Norfolk and the feudal nobles are powerless as, under Cromwell's direction, everything they stand for is getting ripped apart.

A radical alliance now holds power at court -- Anne and Cromwell, the king's evangelical lover and the king's reforming commoner.

But in revolutionary times, no one is safe.

[ Bell tolls ] In January, the king is badly in jured in a jousting accident.

Incurable, ulcerous wounds now scar his legs.

His moods are black, and, suddenly, he is heard to lament his marriage to Anne Boleyn.

Anne was completely in control of the king.

She was mistress of everything, mistress of all she surveyed.

Anne's primary loss of influence with Henry is down to not being able to deliver a male heir.

Anne has just suffered her latest miscarriage.

After 3 years of marriage, she has borne him one daughter, but no son.

Anne knows she is losing Henry's favor and fears the rising influence of Cromwell.

She had been an old ally of Cromwell's, in terms of religious reform, but her frustration and her anger at being threatened by Henry's dissatisfaction made her a very angry and difficult person, indeed.

BORMAN: Anne herself had told Cromwell she wanted to see his head off his shoulders.

He knew that she was gunning for him, and he also knew that, despite everything, she still had a hold over the king.

She had this knack of winning Henry back and so Cromwell could not rely on anything.

He would have been very afraid.

Knowing what happened to Wolsey, Cromwell takes extreme measures.

He turns on Anne before she can turn on him.

Arrest warrants are issued.

Five courtiers are seized, including Anne's own brother.

They are imprisoned in the king's dread fortress, the Tower of London.

Their charge is adultery with the Queen of England.

Anne's detention soon follows.

This is a royal sex scandal with explosive implications.

These were the very steps that Anne would have climbed as she entered the Tower of London through Traitors' Gate.

This is where all of Henry's prisoners would've first encountered the Tower.

What she must've been feeling can only be imagined.

Just hours before, she'd been celebrating the Mayday tournament at the side of the king.

Her arrest came as a complete shock, and here she was now, accused of treason.

Days later, Anne Boleyn is heading for the scaffold.

The accused courtiers have already been executed.

Cromwell has set her up.

Her husband, Henry, is nowhere to be seen.

RONALD: The prosecution evidence was entirely trumped up -- It was very, very weak.

Everybody knew it was weak, but by the same token, everybody knew that it was Henry's will.

For Henry, the charges against Anne are convenient.

He's already courting one of Anne's handmaidens, Jane Seymour.

To him, Anne is already dead.

On the 19th of May, 1536, Anne Boleyn is beheaded.

Just one week later, Henry marries his new queen, Jane Seymour.

BORMAN: Henry VIII wanted to erase all trace of Anne Boleyn after her fall.

He couldn't bear to hear her name mentioned at court, and he even instructed the royal carpenters to take down her initials from the Great Hall here in Hampton Court, but such was the speed they had to work at, that they missed one.

Here, in the center panel, you can see Anne's initials intertwined with those of her estranged husband.

Anne Boleyn is history.

Now Cromwell's position is unchallenged.

The way that Cromwell helped to secure Anne's downfall says an awful lot about his methods at court, just how ruthless he was, because he didn't just bring down Anne, he brought down five arguably innocent men with her, and it was no coincidence that those men were Cromwell's enemies.

The king's loyal commoner and ardent reformer is now the dominant figure in government.

But in Henry's court, your days are always numbered.

[ Bell tolls ] Court painter Hans Holbein produces what will become the classic portrait of the king.

In the three years since his jousting accident, Henry's weight has mushroomed.

RONALD: The sumptuous feasts weren't being worked off.

He just became heavier and heavier.

He had no way of losing that weight.

The ulcerous wounds on his legs are worse.

He now suffers bouts of agonizing pain.

He is also in mourning.

New queen Jane Seymour had died 2 years earlier.

But in Henry's eyes, she died in a noble cause -- childbirth.

Henry's quest for a male heir is over.

Young Prince Edward will one day rule in his stead.

Now the king has a new obsession.

Originally, Henry saw his break fr om Rome as a means to an end, but, under the urging of Cromwell, Henry has permitted reform of his English Church.

Under the Catholics, the Bible could only be read in Latin, but in Henry's Church of England, all men would be able to read the word of God in the king's own Great Bible.

And this is it -- this is the first officially published English Bible in the history of this country, and this wonderful title page tells you what King Henry thought of the Bible.

King Henry's sitting on his throne, giving out God's truth to the nation.

The absolutely biggest figure in the whole title page is King Henry himself.

God, who's immediately above him, really is quite small, in comparison with the king.

It's quite clear that Henry saw himself in a very special role.

As far as Henry's concerned, the Word of God is, "Be obedient to me."

Right at the bottom right-hand corner is a very strange-looking building, and it's actually a prison.

And in the prison are shadowy figures.

They are there because they have not been obedient to the king, and that's where you'll end up.

In reality, disobedient subjects suffer far greater punishments.

In 1537, the North of England had erupted in religious revolt.

This Pilgrimage of Grace was a popular uprising of tens of thousands of people.

Henry responded with extreme violence.

As far as Henry was concerned, it was a rebellion against him and his crown.

Henry vowed to kill every man, woman, and child involved.

He wanted the rebellion put down with extreme brutality, and he got it.

Across the North of England, thousands were executed by Henry's vengeful army.

The insurrection is crushed, but the battle for influence between Norfolk and Cromwell intensifies.

Cromwell still has the confidence of the king and dominates the council.

But as with Wolsey 10 years before, a woman will lead to his downfall.

It starts with a picture.

Cromwell is proposing a diplomatic marriage to a European princess -- Anne of Cleves.

The theory of the Anne of Cleves marriage was brilliant.

It would cement Cromwell's religious and political reformation, but what Cromwell forgot was the human dimension.

Would Henry actually like his new bride?

On the basis of this miniature portrait, Henry agrees to the arranged marriage.

Cromwell was taking an enormous risk in marrying Henry off to a woman he'd never seen.

He was relying on a portrait that was not only of a beautiful woman, but also true to life.

When they finally meet, Henry is repelled by his new bride, and Cromwell loses the ear of his monarch.

The Duke of Norfolk takes full advantage of his rival's weakness and seizes his chance to play his hand.

HUTCHINSON: Norfolk is planning to place one of his nieces in the royal bed -- Catherine Howard, something of an airhead bimbo, who, he tells Henry, is as pure as the driven snow.

BORMAN: Here is a very alluring alternative to the bride who Henry is revolted by.

Catherine Howard, she's young, she's vivacious, but she's the niece of the Duke of Norfolk, Cromwell's enemy.

Cromwell is outsmarted.

The king starts divorce proceedings, making ready for a new marriage.

And Norfolk wastes no time.

Henry now starts to listen to the whisperings against his chief minister.

Within a few months, 10 years of faithful service are undermined.

The slow drip of innuendo switches the loyalties of the paranoid king.

On the 10th of June, 1540, Cromwell arrives at a council meeting and is ambushed.

He is arrested for treason.

Norfolk himself strips Cromwell of his chain of office.

HUTCHINSON: As far as Norfolk's concerned, this is personal.

All his resentments, all his frustrations, all his slights he suffered at the hands of Thomas Cromwell down the years, he has now paid back with interest, because the upstart has been put in his proper place, in a cell in the Tower of London.

Cromwell does not give up.

He writes to the king from his cell, pleading for forgiveness, in a last-ditch attempt to save himself.

Those letters do make Henry pause for thought.

He asks for that one particular letter, where Cromwell pleads for "mercy, mercy, mercy," to be read to him not once, but three times.

It looks like the king is going to change his mind.

But there is no mercy for the great reformer.

On the 28th of July, 1540, after a decade in power, the self-made man is unmade.

That same day, Henry marries Catherine Howard.

The aristocracy are back in charge.

Under the Duke of Norfolk, a conservative backlash can begin.

But ahead lies only chaos.

[ Bell tolls ] Once again, Henry's court is in turmoil.

Love letters are found, proving new queen Catherine Howard is an adulteress.

She was a silly, silly girl and, unlike Anne, was definitely guilty of adultery.

Henry is unforgiving of her betrayal, but his wrath will spread well beyond Catherine and her lovers.

Tainted by her treachery, many of her family fall under the ax.

But her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, survives.

He is saved, as he is vital to the king's new passion.

HUTCHINSON: Henry needs him because he hasn't got too many experienced generals to call upon, and there is the distant trumpet of military glory still sounding in Henry's ears.

The 1540s are dominated by war against France.

Henry wants to recapture French lands once owned by the English nobility.

He has already spent a fortune on military fortifications.

HUTCHINSON: This is Southsea Castle, one of a string of artillery forts which Henry VIII built to defend his realm from attack along the South coast of England.

He paid for this massive construction program from money earned -- looted -- from the dissolution of the monasteries.

War is an outlet for Henry's aggression.

Norfolk and his fellow nobles approve of the belligerent policy.

There are now no wiser minds to stand in their way.

BORMAN: I think there can be no doubt that, if Cromwell had survived, or, indeed, if Wolsey had, we would not have been at war with France.

They were always far too cautious, far too frugal, to forward or to advance a policy of aggression.

At huge expense, Henry launches multiple invasions, but early success is followed by setbacks.

By mid-1545, the French are invading England.

HUTCHINSON: On Thursday, 19th of July, 1545, Henry was standing on this very spot, or very near it, and looking across to the Isle of Wight, and he can see Francis I's invasion fleet -- 225 ships, 20,000 or 30,000 soldiers.

It looked like a forest had suddenly appeared on the surface of the sea.

It was threatening.

It was terrifying.

Henry now witnesses a military disaster.

As his fleet prepares for battle, his flagship, the Mary Rose, sinks right in front of him.

The sinking of the Mary Rose really symbolizes the failure of Henry's quest for military glory.

He had spent hundreds of millions of dollars, in modern-day terms, fighting the French and achieving very little.

He had bankrupted the country, devalued the coinage, caused rampant inflation, for nothing, and now, his flagship was 40 feet deep under the Solent.

The war ends in stalemate, but England's coffers are empty.

Henry's dreams of glory are over.

Now his court will suffer the tyrant's displeasure.

Henry's behavior becomes more erratic.

He is somebody who becomes more unpredictable.

There's a fear at court about what the monarch might do.

You know, if you caught him on the wrong day, you might suddenly face Henry's wrath.

[ Bell tolls ] As his health deteriorates, Henry backtracks on religious reform.

If reforming clergy aren't aligned with the king's personal beliefs, they are burned alongside Catholics.

Suddenly, he decided that, actually, he's gone too far.

He tries to revoke the issue of allowing people to read the Bible in English, but it's too late.

I mean, the printing presses have been running.

Men across the country are reading the Bible.

There is a developing sense that the Protestant faith is growing.

And Henry himself, having let the genie out of the bottle, can't put it back in again.

The religious divide now redefines the ruthless politics of the court.

Instead of factions just simply dividing between what might've been the old nobility and the new men, as is what happened in the 1530s, we've got an entirely different paradigm, where, in fact, now, it's those who want to uphold the Catholic religion versus those who wish to push forward the Protestant religion.

And those two factions are constantly trying to find a way of bringing each faction down in the eyes of the king.

In July, the conflict reaches right to the heart of the palace.

A woman begs for her life in front of the ailing king.

It is his new wife, his sixth queen, Catherine Parr.

The queen stands accused of heresy.

Catherine Parr was devoutly believing in evangelical ideas.

She wrote a very influential book all about them, but it was seen as heresy by the likes of Norfolk.

They hunted her down.

They called for her execution.

The pitiless monarch will decide her fate.

This intimate entreaty is her only hope.

Access to the king was even more important now.

It was literally the only way you could survive, if you'd been accused of heresy or of treason.

She pleaded for her life with her husband.

She reminded him, in person, of her loyalty to him.

She threw herself on her husband's mercy.

Catherine is lucky.

Her pleading satisfies her vengeful husband.

But winter is coming.

As Henry's festering wounds worsen, his moods are more unstable.

No one now is safe as he lashes out in feverish paranoia.

You could suddenly be out of favor.

You could suddenly annoy the king.

You never knew, from one day to the next, whether you'd see the next dawn.

In December, it is the turn of Norfolk's family.

He is arrested.

His son, executed.

Henry is again plagued by fear of rival noble bloodlines.

Even if no one was attempting to usurp him, he did not want any rival claim to the throne.

Norfolk's execution is set for the 6th of January.

But for once, the king's orders would not be carried out.

That very night, Henry's fever worsens.

It is said that, as he fades, the king who destroyed the Catholic church in England clutches at his Catholic rosary, and Henry VIII breathes his last.

The tyrant is dead.

Henry would be remembered, but not for the reasons he'd hoped.

The Tudor line he was so anxious to legitimize would last less than 100 years, but the social changes he set in motion would transform the nation.

Was Henry Tudor a good king?

No.

He was brutal, he was ruthless, and he only acted in the pursuance of his own personal objectives.

He was probably the most selfish king we've ever had -- and we've had a few -- but he made his mark.

BORMAN: Henry's reign saw a transformation in every single aspect of English life, from religion to politics, to the way in which the government was run.

Did he intend any of this?

I think he didn't.

I think it started and ended with his human desire for a wife who would give him a son.

Without Henry VIII's actions, the USA would not be there in the form we know because Tudor England gave birth to the English Protestant Reformation, and it was English Protestants who created the North American colonies.

They also took the idea of parliaments with them, the parliament which Thomas Cromwell had made so important.

You can't imagine the United States of America without Henry VIII.

SKIDMORE: Henry's reign marks the end of when hereditary rights were all that mattered.

Suddenly, you have self-made men who get to where they want to be simply on their ability alone.

The development of parliament allowed for a new society, a new society in which men, regardless of their birth, could succeed in life.

Henry's reign effectively marks the end of the medieval period and the birth of the modern world.

"Inside the Court of Henry VIII" is available on DVD.

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